Demands and Expectations
by Kirstenlh23
Summary: Adrienne Agreste had tried to be her father's perfect daughter since before she could remember. Unfortuanetly for him, she had failed repeatedly and then given up. Their relationship was now a precarious balancing act between tricking the world into believing her act of perfection, and in exchange granting her the stipulations she had demanded to keep up the front.
1. Chapter 1

Adrienne Agrest had always tried to make her father proud. In the foggy recess of her oldest memories she could recall the times that she had succeeded, back when she had been a small child. Before her mother had disapeared and her father had become a distant authority figure, devoid of any recognizable human emotion.

She'd been seven when her mother had vanished from her life, and her father had drawn away bit by bit, every instince of approval and expression of love becoming further and further apart. At first his lack of approvel had served to drive Adrienne hard to succeed, a warm and beautiful feeling of pride filling her on the rare occasions she managed to garner an approving comment, or even an inclination of his head in her general direction in the moments he could spare from his burgening business. By the time she had reached adolecence, she was multi-lingual, above her grade level in academics, proficient in martial arts, and had even begun ballet lessons after overhearing her father remark to his assistant about her lack of femine pursuits.

At the age of thirteen, she had graced the cover of France's most popular teen fashion magazine, the crowning accomplishment of her modeling career to date. Over worked, isolated, and beginning to feel the resentment of her situation, it had still been a proud moment for her. Finally away from the kids brand! An inside spread showed her with male teen models, all older than her, all wearing swim wear. Her father had hired a man to coach her on her walk, and she had recently gone through a growth spurt; soon she would be walking in actual shows. That evening her father had joined her for dinner, the formal dinning room tense and silent as they ate. Adrienne had waited in vain for any mention of the magazine, eyes darting across the table every thirty seconds as she picked at her food. The approval had never come.

Adrienne had jumped when his voice had finally broken the opressive quiet in the room.

"I'll have to instruct the kitchen to lesson your portion size for meals, now that you're modeling for an older demografic" his eyes raked over her figure pointedly, "being chubby isn't tolerated in this industry past a certain age." He pushed his seat back as he stood, leaving the room without another word.

Adrienne's breath had caught in her throat at his words, and she felt herself gasp through her constricting throat as the door swung closed behind him. The precarious balance of striving for approval and rising bitterness tipped inside of her, decidedly in favor of the latter. She stared down at her half-eaten plate of food, and then tilted her head down further, examining her shapely arms toned from martial arts and dance, at her flat stomach and barely developed chest.

How... How dare he? She felt sick. Suddenly she couldn't stomach the thought of another bite of food.

Her last scheduled activity for the day was her martial arts class, where she landed her hits harder than she should have, nocking her sparing parter down repeatedly and earning a reprimand from her instructer. She ducked her head in shame and apologized to the other student, guilt joining simmering anger and resentment in the pit of her stomach, which was growling at her loudly on the ride back to the mansion. Apparently a barage of negetivity didn't count as a filling meal.

If Nathalie noticed Adrienne's dour mood she made no mention of it, and Adrienne retired to her large empty room, sweaty, tired, and hungry. She shucked off her dirty clothes, but instead of hopping straight into the shower as she normally did, she paused in front of the bathroom mirror. She had gained weight in the last year. She'd also gained several inches in height. Every book about puberty that Nathalie had awkwardly handed to her the week she'd first gotten her period had stressed that these changes to her body were normal.

Adrienne hadn't been bothered by them before tonight. Now she twisted in front of the mirror, examining her angles with an unhappy crease between her eyes. She had light stretch marks on the sides of her breasts and along her hips, hardly noticible but suddenly seeming to scream out at her to be seen. She'd always been proud of her hard earned muscles, but now they seemed harsh and un-femminen.

When she finally stepped into the shower she turned the water as hot as she could stand it, tiping her head of golden blond tresses back into the stream and squeezing her green eyes tightly closed.

Before she climbed into bed that night, she tore every page of the magazine that had her face on it out, and tossed the crumpled pages into the trash. The mangled rest of the magazine following shortly after.

Adrienne barely touched her breakfast the next day, pushing the eggs around her plate as Nathalie dictated her schedule for the day to her from beside her chair. By lunch time her stomach was cramping from hunger pains, and she felt more exhausted than she could ever remember being. She ate three bites of lunch and felt like choking; Nathalie asked her if she was unwell, but Adrienne insisted that she was fine.

The week passed in much the same way, and each night she fell into bed more tired than the night before. She quickly found that she had to eat more before her physical activities if she didn't want her performance to drop dramatically, and began to save her self-alloted amount of food for before ballet and martial arts classes.

On the eigth such day, her father joined her for dinner again. Adrienne didn't break the silence or look up at her father for the entire meal, devoting most of her energy to pushing potatoes and peices of chicken around her plate. She forced down a few bites before standing and asking if she could be excused for the evening.

Her father looked up and met her eyes for a moment, face calm and impassive as was usual. He studied her plate for a few seconds, and Adrienne felt her heart constrict painfully; Had Nathalie informed him that she hadn't been eating enough, and he was about to tell her to sit back down an finish?

Instead he looked up from her almost full plate, and gave her an approving nod. Adrienne despised the way her heart swelled with pride.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2

Rebellion and Consequences

* * *

Adrienne became very adept at channeling her considerable drive to succeed toward her new goal. The rule of the game was simple – eat as little as possible.

The will power that had helped her master languages and academics, the discipline that had been trained into her by years of martial arts and dance found another purpose to fulfill. She memorized the calorie count of all foods she was likely to be given, and regimented them strictly based into her meager diet.

She _knew_ what she was doing was all sorts of fucked up. She knew it wasn't healthy, and for once in her life she didn't care. Each cramp in her stomach and acid reflux in the back of her throat was a badge of victory. She was fighting every natural instinct in her body, and she was winning.

Adrienne's ballet teacher fawned over her in class. "Such a lithe form! You truly have the body of a ballerina, my dear."

Adrienne smiled in satisfaction, but frowned as the instructor lined up the other girls in her class and counted how many ribs were visible. Her victory turned to guilt in her mouth as a younger girl was called out for her lack of visible bones.

Adrienne caught the girl after class, Nathalie waiting for her impatiently by the door. "Lots of dancers don't have visible ribs; the point is to be strong, not skinny. Don't listen to her."

She felt like a hypocrite as the words left her mouth, but she stuffed that feeling down. She knew she was self-destructing, but that didn't mean it was right to let someone else start down the same path.

The girl looked awed that Adrienne Agrest was speaking to her, and she turned a bit red in the face at the attention.

"I- thank you…" She murmured, and Adrienne nodded firmly before leaving.

She was showered with complements at photoshoots for her 'new' look.

"So editorial!" One photographer gushed, and Adrienne wondered how long 'editorial' had actually meant 'skeletal'. She was booked for her first show a month after her father's comment had begun her downward trend, and many more in the months that followed the first.

Vogue Paris interviewed her, and there was her face staring out at her from the pages under the title, "The Youngest Face of Fashion". She was fairly certain several of the girls she'd done shoots with were her age, but their last names weren't Agrest, so apparently they didn't count.

There were those who saw what she was doing, and in their own way tried to stop her. Nathalie began to pack her high calorie protein bars and shakes in her gym bag, and her dojo instructor even took her aside and asked if she was alright, telling her that he was there for her if she wanted to talk about it. She'd kept her voice calm and pretended she didn't know what he was implying, though his look told her he wasn't buying the act for a moment. She did her best not to cry at the welling of emotion his concern brought on, and he thankfully dropped the subject for the moment. He was one of the best people she knew.

The one person who didn't react to her diminishing frame in one way or another since it had begun was her father. Gabriel Agrest was absent more often than he was home. Adrienne found that she didn't much care whether he noticed or not; she was done striving for his attention. She was never again going to be the little girl that she had been, hoping in vain for an encouraging smile while he uncaringly went about his business. She didn't even aim to upset him. She was just done with him all together, and if that idea twisted her stomach into knots and made her want to sink out of sight forever, she banished such emotion to the back of her mind.

The money she was making was going into a savings account in her name, and the idea that that money would be hers when she was eighteen kept her driving forward with her modeling. Four and a half more years and she would be free.

That Christmas she sat in her room with the present from her dad, the card written by Nathalie and signed with his name held in one hand. She was proud that she barely felt sad anymore that Gabriel hadn't bothered to come home for the holidays; she'd celebrated with the kitchen and wait staff instead, though she knew that was considered beneath her by her father. She'd allowed herself one large cup of hot cocoa for the special occasion. She'd also sneaked an almost full pack of cigarettes out of the chef's jacked pocket when he'd been too tipsy to notice. What kind of chef smoked so much anyway? No wonder he over salted everything.

And now she dropped Nathalie/Gabrial's card into the trash can in her room as she worked one of her windows open and crawled out onto the ledge.

It was cold, the wind whipping her hair around her face, getting it in her eyes and mouth until she managed to stuff it under her hat. She settled down against a wall and stretched her legs out on the ledge in front of her as she attempted to use the matches swiped from the kitchen to light her cigarette. The wind kept blowing it out. Adrienne swore quietly under her breath and cupped her hands around it to keep the wind off. Even then it wasn't lighting properly, and it wasn't until she thought to suck through it while holding the match up to it did it ignite.

Adrienne immediately started coughing, and almost burned her fingers as she tried to muffle the sounds of her hacking. When the coughs subsided, she glared at the cigarette accusingly, and took a second pull with more respect for its abilities. She coughed again. The third drag went down easier, and by the fourth her head was feeling pleasantly fuzzy. She stubbed it out on the cement when she began to feel nauseous, and stuffed her hands inside her jacket for warmth, her head resting back against the wall. What would anyone think of role model prodigy child Adrienne Agrest now? It gave her a strange sense of pleasure to not be what everyone assumed she was.

She shivered, but wasn't ready to go back inside to her sterile room. The stars were bright through the haze of light pollution that hung perpetually over Paris at night, and Adrienne wondered what it would be like to fly away from all of her problems.

She was chilled to the bone when she finally crawled back through the window after tossing the used matches and cigarette butt over the ledge, and her shower felt burning against her skin.

Wrapped in a towel and flipping through the computer before bed, Adrienne ran across a news article that made her stop and click.

"New Law Passes in France, Fashion Industry Affected"

"A law that passed this week in France has the fashion industry reeling," the text continued, "all agencies must now require their models to be a healthy weight, as certified by a physician. Agencies will not be able to hire underweight models, whose body max index qualifies them as under a healthy weight. This law has been set in action to combat the rising levels of eating disorders within the modeling profession, as well as to counter the message sent to viewers of un-realistic beauty standards. Additionally, all images that are digitally altered will have to be labelled as such."

The article went on, but Adrienne had stopped reading. She remembered overhearing people talking about this over the last few weeks, but she had never been paying enough attention to know what it was all about. Now she stared at the words on the screen, reading the words 'eating disorder' over and over again. She didn't want to lump herself into that category, didn't want to admit that what her problem was had a name. It wasn't an eating disorder if she did it on purpose, was it?

She dug one of the many protein bars out of her gym bag and opened it, sitting very still with it clenched in her fist for several minutes. It ended up in the trash on top of the card as she curled up in bed, dissatisfied.

Her last comforting thought as she drifted off to sleep, was that her father was going be furious when he had to deal with her before her next photo shoot. Perhaps she'd have to admit to herself that what she did was, in part, meant to spite him.


	3. Chapter 3

It was near the end of January when Adrienne was finally ushered into her doctor's office to receive the necessary certification. Nathalie had a look of concern on her face that she failed to conceal, and Adrienne knew it was because unlike her father, Nathalie knew she was unlikely to come away with a clean bill of health. Adrienne left her in the waiting room as she was led away by a tired looking nurse. This was the same doctor's office that she had always come to, and it felt strangely surreal to be back, feeling guilty and nervous as the nurse charted her height and weight (5'9" and 102 lbs). She felt her heartrate increase; she'd grown another inch in the last few months, and she was at her lowest weight yet. The blood pounding in her ears made her feel dizzy.

The tired looking nurse was waking up, peering at her a bit closer and then scrawling a note hurriedly in her chart before leading her away.

For once, her doctor didn't make her wait long.

"Adrienne, it's been a while. How are you doing?"

He was a middle aged man that looked younger than he was, with darker skin and an Indian accent that hadn't faded much over his years in France. Adrienne had always gotten along with him well.

"I'm… I'm good." She lied, "How are you?"

"Good, good…" He said softly, holding her eyes with his own.

Adrienne was the first to break eye contact, looking down at the tops of her shoes in shame. He knew she was lying.

"Well, it's been over half a year since you've been in to see me." He was flipping through her chart, eyes tracing the note the nurse had scrawled on the page. "You've been through quite the growth spurt – almost four inches since last time."

He looked up at her again but she didn't meet his eyes.

"The thing that concerns me, is that while you've gotten taller, you've conversely lost a lot of weight. At your age and height the healthy weight range is between is between 125 lbs, and 150 lbs."

Adrienne kicked her heels against the underside of the patient bed she was sitting on, still studying the tops of her shoes. She felt a flash of victory in her stomach, but it was almost lost among the shame and… and the fear. She'd done her research online over the last month. She knew what lay ahead of her if she didn't change things around soon; she had already notice her hair falling out more, great big clumps of blond strands clogging the drain after her showers. Her hands and feet were perpetually cold, and her grades had finally started to slip due to her constant fatigue. She had lost much of the muscle definition that she had once been so proud of, and had missed her period entirely the last month.

She had tried to make herself eat more. Told herself that pissing off her dear old dad wasn't worth feeling the way she had started to feel. She hadn't been able to do it.

And now she was sitting in front of her doctor with kind eyes, feeling so damn proud of herself. Proud, angry, and defiant emotions directly at odds with guilt, shame, and fear.

What the _fuck_ was wrong with her?

Angry tears burned down her face and she dashed them away with the back of her hand, pursing her lips tightly closed and trying to control her breathing through her nose.

The doctor sighed and leaned back in his chair. "I'm not the right person to help you with this, Adrienne, so I'm going to refer you to a friend of mine, okay?"

She nodded her acceptance and squeezed her eyes closed to stop more tears leaking out. It didn't work. She heard the scratching of a pen as he wrote something out for her on a pad of paper, and then he spoke again.

"This is the contact information for Doctor Louis Long-Phen. She's a therapist and a good friend, and I'm going to have her call and make an appointment with you, okay?" She nodded again. "Is your father in the waiting room?"

Adrienne opened her eyes to give him an incredulous look, and he flushed slightly.

"Ah, Nathalie then?" Another nod. "I'm going to talk to her about scheduling for you, if that's alright."

Adrienne didn't object, and Nathalie and the doctor had a quiet talk in the waiting room before Nathalie led the way out to the car. The silence was awkward on the ride home, and it was Nathalie who broke the silence.

"I'm going to have to inform your father about… Well, I'll need his permission to book your new appointments. For financial reasons."

Adrienne nodded, and now that the time had come, there was very little satisfaction in thinking of her father's reaction. Turned out she was right to feel trepidation.

That evening Adrienne stood in front of her father's desk, feeling small and intimidated as she always did standing in front of him. Gabriel Agreste looked irritated, though anyone who didn't know him as she did might not have been able to see it; he kept his face cool and impassive, but the tightening of his hands on top of the desk gave him away.

"Nathalie informs me that I'm going to have to cancel every photoshoot and every walk you're booked in for an indefinite period of time."

Really? Adrienne thought, that's your opening line? He could at least pretend to be concerned for her health. She opted to stay silent, and after a moment he continued on.

"She also tells me I'll be hiring a therapist for no small sum of money, so that they can convince my daughter to eat. That is apparently too hard of a task for you to manage on your own?"

Adrienne didn't say anything. What could she have said to that? Her jaw was locked so tight she thought she might crack her teeth.

Her father sighed. "This is ridiculous, girl. You're going to eat the amount food necessary to get certified by the agency, and this is the last I want to hear of it. I'm not going to pay some doctor for crazy people to convince you to eat your dinner."

He picked up a file of papers on his desk and motioned for her to leave. She stood rooted to the spot, and he looked up a moment later and frowned at her.

"You've been dismissed."

She managed to unseal her jaw. "No."

He raised an eyebrow at her, "Excuse me?"

His voice was dangerously soft, but Adrienne was past caring.

"I said, no." Adrienne wanted to rage and scream, but all she could manage was a soft and wavering tone. "I'm not going to do. I won't eat, and I'll end up in the hospital with a feeding tube down my throat, and what will the magazine companies think of that?"

She stepped up to the desk and rested her hands on the front of it, leaning down to stare him in the eyes. "What do you think I'll tell them when they want an interview? What do you think the tabloids would do with a story like that? Not great for your brand image, I imagine."

Gabriel had gone pale.

"This is absurd."

Adrienne let the silence drag on, feeling her heart beat in her ears and her blood burn in her veins. She had never felt so angry in her life, and if he thought she wouldn't drag the family name in the dirt with her to the grave, he was wrong.

"If… If I let you go to this… _doctor…_ you'll eat again?" It was frightening how emotionless he voice could be.

"No." Adrienne said, and got a sick enjoyment out of the shock on his face before she continued. "I want more than that. I want to go to public school next year. I want to be free to leave the house and have a normal fucking life."

Adrienne realized she was breathing heavily and clamped her mouth shut again, waiting for a response.

It was slow in coming, but it surprised her when it did.

"And in exchange?" Her father asked.

Adrienne leaned back and tried not to let her surprise show. She hadn't expected that to actually work, she'd just been letting her pent up rage out. She thought quickly.

"In exchange I'll reach the weight needed to model again. I'll smile for the damn camera and tell interviewers that everything is wonderful. I'll keep my grades up and be your perfect little girl again."

Something she'd said made him flinch, a flash of pain in his eyes that absurdly made her insides writhe with guilt before he was once again impassive and cold.

"I accept your terms. You're dismissed."

Saying she'd eat again and actually getting herself to do it were two different things entirely. It took weeks before she could manage more than a few bites per meal.

Her therapist was a stern French- Asian woman with graying hair who often made Adrienne angry enough to sit through an entire session without saying a word to her. Sometimes she was certain the woman said things just to provoke a reaction from her, and it made her furious. Adrienne yelled at her more than a few times, and was horrified the first time she broke down in a fit of tears in the middle of the office, crying into her doctor's shoulder. She felt angry and pathetic, and gradually, she felt better.

Doctor Long talked about the research done on the causes of eating disorders. She never shamed her or implied she was being an immature child, she just let her talk and gave her facts and encouragement. She gave her resources where Adrienne could read other's stories so that she felt less isolated. And she talked about control.

Adrienne felt as if she had never understood herself better as she learned more about her disease. As a teenager, as her father's prize daughter, she made zero important decisions in her own life. Her designer clothes were picked out for her, her schedule made weeks in advance and dictated to her each morning. Her career had been mandated by her father, and she had practically no interaction that wasn't monitored by adults. But she could control what she put in her mouth. No one could make her eat if she didn't want to.

Nathalie scratched the calorie count off of the shake labels and protein bars that she put in her bag, as if Adrienne hadn't memorized their content. It was a touching gesture, and Adrienne forced herself to start eating them. She chose to, even if they tasted like ash in her mouth.

It took months of progress to put back on some of the weight she had lost so quickly before, and she still had days when she could hardly manage to eat at all. Her father had likely thought it would take a month instead of five before she barely managed to get her doctor's approval for modeling again, but he never brought it up. In fact, she barely saw him at all, as he had stopped coming to their weekly dinner's altogether.

In June, her weight back up to 124, she was surprised to find that she had missed modeling since January. It really could be fun, hanging out with the other models backstage or on set for photoshoots, and the adrenaline when walking the cat walk was unique.

Unable to excuse away her five month absence, she did an interview about it instead. It actually felt good to get ahead of the story that would have leaked anyway, though she had to give it a spin to sound as if her father had been supportive of her along the way. The magazines ate it up, and Adrienne hoped that it would at least encourage other people to get help too.

After the article ran, a surprise guest showed up at her house one day in early July – Chloe. The girls had been forced together as small children, though they had grown apart as they aged. They saw each other on formal occasions still, but Adrienne hadn't expected her to show up with a basket of cookies.

"To help you not be so skinny." The girl had explained, flushing.

There was no way in hell Chloe had baked them herself, but it still might have been the nicest thing she had ever done. On impulse Adrienne invited her to go out shopping with her, and used her new found freedom to buy clothes she actually liked for the upcoming school year at the designer mall. Chloe was embarrassingly horrible to the employees, and Adrienne made sure to apologize to them for the other girl before leaving each store. That seemed to confuse Chloe, and they parted ways without making any other plans to get together.

The night before Adrienne's first day of public school, she couldn't sleep. She had laid out her outfit for the next day, checked her alarm three times, and now she was outside of her window again sneaking another smoke.

She knew it was a bad habit, but it was better than obsessing over her food intake constantly. She felt stronger again, her head clearer and her muscles coming back. It had been a year since she had begun restricting her diet dramatically. She was fourteen now, and though she felt more in control of herself, there was a constant corner of her brain ticking off calories in the back of her mind. She took a long puff of smoke, and the voice quieted.

She'd worked out a deal with one of the maids in exchange for the cigarettes, leaving cash in one of the draws and picking up the smokes in the same location after the cleaning had been done. She only had one or two a day, and sometimes none, but it felt amazing to forget about being perfect for a few hidden moments and do something she wasn't supposed to. It helped her relax.

She looked up at the stars above Paris, and wondered what her life would be like by the end of the week.

Miles away, but still under the lights of Paris, an old man and his kwami were beginning their search for the next generation of Miraculous holders. By the end of the next day, the future heroes of the city would be chosen.


	4. Chapter 4

Marinette's day started off with disaster, as was perfectly normal for her. She managed to knock just about everything off the counter while making cereal for breakfast, and had spilled half the cookies her father made for class all over the dirty sidewalk before she even made it off the corner where she lived. At least that poor old man hadn't gotten smushed by the car.

After arriving in class in the nick of time, she was resigned to see Chloe already there, looming over a new girl with auburn hair. Chloe was demanding that the girl give up her seat, and the new girl was holding her own with a bravery that Marinette admired greatly; most people buckled under the weight of Chloe's bitchy attitude, but the redhead was giving as good as she got. Marinette liked her immediately.

"Why don't you come sit by me? You don't want to be next to these two anyway." Marinette offered, glancing meaningfully at Sabrina, who was sycophantically echoing Chloe's every word.

Fire hair glared at Chloe, and seeing that Chloe was pissed that Marinette had turned the situation to make it seem like the spot was a bad option, graciously accepted her offer.

Marinette soon learned that her name was Alya, that she had a major thing for superheroes, and that she defined the word 'evil' with Chloe's name. An instant friendship was formed and formally sealed with cookies from her slightly crumpled box.

The teacher had just called the class to attention when the door opened, and Marinette looked up at who had entered. And up, and up… This girl was _tall._ Tall, with golden blond hair, perfectly styled clothes, and a face that looked like it'd just sailed off of a magazine cover.

Seemingly unaffected by the murmurs that had broken out at her appearance she walked up to the teacher and handed her a note.

"There was a photoshoot at the park that was timed for sunrise, it took longer to wrap up than it should have. Then there was a little old man who fell in the street and… anyway, sorry to be tardy on my first day."

Marinette sincerely hoped it wasn't the same little old man she'd manhandled while pulling out of the street just a few minutes ago. Had she rattled his brain yanking him like she had? And the girl had said she'd been at a photoshoot – she must be a model, which made sense when you looked at her.

Miss tall blond and gorgeous had settled into the seat directly in front of her, and Nino who was sitting beside her looked like he was beginning to sweat. Marinette wondered if the sound she was hearing from behind her was drool hitting the desks of all the boys in class, and sniggered quietly into her hands at the thought.

The teacher got the class to settle down, and Marinette passed her box of cookies to Nino, who took one with a thumbs up to Marinette, and passed the box to the girl whose name she now knew was Adrienne Agreste, thanks to roll call. Marinette knew that last name; Gabriel Agreste was one of her very favorite designers.

Adrienne's perfect face scrunched up into a look of what might have been disgust, and she passed the box without talking one to the person across the aisle. Chloe waved to her, and Adrienne smiled slightly and waved back as Ivan had an outburst from behind them and was sent to cool down in the principle's office.

 _Well then._ Marinette thought with a sinking sensation in her stomach, no cookies for you then, see if I care. And she was friends with Chloe? Lovely. Marinette didn't know what she'd do if there were two Chloe's to contend with, but it would probably involve dying in a humiliating manner. She'd just steer clear of Adrienne Agreste and Chloe alike.

Steering clear of them wasn't hard that day, because Homeroom had been broken up for barely five minutes before the school was evacuated due to one of her classmates turning into a giant stone monster and beginning to rain chaos down on Paris.

Wait – WHAT?

Adrienne's body guard and driver was at the school steps immediately after an evacuation had been called, which made Adrienne believe that he'd never really left the neighborhood after dropping her off. What had he been doing, guarding the entrance to the school? She hoped her father paid him a good salary.

Also… There was a monster tearing apart Paris.

What the fuck was happening? Her world had gone from worrying that she'd offended the girl behind her by declining her delicious looking cookies (how many calories did those cream stuffed beauties have in them), to processing the fact that monsters did in fact exist. And went to her new school, apparently.

She rushed through the front doors of her house, and paused at the foot of the huge staircase, half expecting her father to be waiting for her there to make sure she had made it home safe. The portrait of her and her mother and father stared down at her instead, and she went to her room without further delay, flipping her rarely used TV on and over to the news.

She dropped her backpack onto the couch and flopped down next to it, staring in wonder at the terrifying scenes being broadcast live. The wreckage was happening not too far away, and Adrienne was wondering if she should gather all the staff into the building and activate the security system when she noticed the strange little box sitting on the table in front of her.

It was heavy for its size, and she turned it over in her hands, trying to read the strange markings on the outside. It looked like Chinese, but it was an older dialect than the one she was learning.

With a mental shrug she opened it, and promptly fell backwards off the couch as a bright green ball of light coalesced in front of her. She may have even screamed, but there was no one close enough to hear it.

Her panic faded as the light flashed away, leaving in its place an adorable… something. With bright green eyes, coal black fur, tiny little fangs, and ears that looked like a kittens, it was easily the cutest thing she'd ever seen. It was also flying with no support of any kind of wings, and yawing so wide it looked like it might split in two.

"What in the world are you?" She managed to say from her position on the floor.

"I'm Plagg, I'm a Kwami, do you…" He (and it was a he), spoke very fast and then stopped abruptly as he got a good look at her, flying over to hover in front of her nose. "HA! You're a girl."

"Aptly spotted" she said dryly, "what the hell is a kwami?"

The little cat-thing cackled wickedly, obviously un-offended by her tone.

"I'm something who is going to grant _you_ the power of destruction. Do you have any food? I'm starving."

He began to zip around her room, experimentally nibbling on various objects as he went. Adrienne dug in her backpack and emerged with the sandwich she had packed so that she wouldn't have to come home for lunch. She waved it in the air, and Plagg zoomed into it and tore it apart, tossing aside the bread and meat and gobbling up the slice of cheese with loud smacking noises.

"The power of destruction you said?"

He nodded vigorously as he ate, and a very bad thought occurred to her.

"Wait, is that what happened to that kid in my class? Did a kwami turn him into that?!" She gestured to the TV just as the stone monster tossed a cop car into the news cameras.

"No!" Plagg snapped defensively, the last of the cheese gone. "Well, not directly anyway… He's being controlled by a human and forced to turn people into super villains, so it's humans at fault, not us!"

"Okay, okay, sorry." She said, holding up her hands. "Why are you in my room then, if you're not going to turn me into some monster?"

"Because you've been chosen, Adrienne Agreste, to be the holder of my Miraculous; you'll merge with my power and become the Black Cat, a super hero. Another person has been chosen and is likely meeting with my counterpart, who grants the power of creation. Together, you two will fight those who have been taken over by evil, and return them to their normal state."

He didn't sound too enthusiastic about it, more like he was reading her an instruction manual.

"Once you transform, you'll have super strength and agility, heightened senses, and in a final burst of power you can wreck a large amount of destruction with a swipe of your claws."

Claws? She thought, looking down at her hands.

"But it's better to wait until you're desperate to do that, because you'll change back to your normal self and then everyone would discover who you are. Which reminds me," he zoomed back up to her face, "no telling anyone about this! Your super identity is your secret identity, got it?"

"Yeah, sure, I got it! Not like anyone around here is paying enough attention to notice anyway." She muttered, "So that's it then? I should just transform and go beat up a monster right now?"

"Yeah, that's basically it… Ladybug will have the job of capturing and cleansing the Akuma after the fight; you and I just beat a lot of shit up, historically speaking."

"Alright, sounds good to me! Let's do this!"

Adrienne jumped up, adrenaline already pumping and – nothing happened. There was a very awkward silence, broken when Plagg started snickering at her.

"You need to wear the ring that's in the box, and give me some sort of command to transform you." He finally managed to instruct her.

She quickly scooped up the silver ring that she had overlooked in all the excitement, and slipped it on.

"Plagg, transform me!"

The world spun, and she saw Plagg disappearing into her ring as her vision darkened. When she had recovered her balance, she found herself wrapped in a tight black material that felt both incredibly durable and incredibly flexible.

She flexed her black clad hands, and claws shot out from above her first knuckle bone as if it was the most natural thing in the world. She could smell and identify hundreds of scents, and something on top of her head twitched as a maid scurried down a hallway two corridors over from her room.

Adrienne retracted her claws and felt the top of her head, fingers brushing pointed cat ears that had sprouted out. They felt like they were the same material as her suit, but she could _feel_ them. It was bizarre. She also had a tail made of the suit material, and she could move it at will.

The biggest difference was how she felt physically – she was practically vibrating with energy. She was always fit from her strenuous dance and martial arts practices, but now she felt as if she could run a marathon without breaking a sweat. Every cell in her body begged to be moving, leaping, running, fighting.

Without wasting time inspecting herself in a mirror, she opened the window she normally used for smoke breaks and crawled out onto the ledge. She thought she could probably jump down to the ground and scale the outer wall, but something urged her to reach for the baton like weapon that had appeared at her waist.

Plagg hadn't mentioned it, and she inspected it closely. It looked like it was sunk into itself like a telescope, and she gave it a shake to see if it would expand. It shot out an incredible distance, making her jump and hiss in surprise.

Embarrassed, she tilted it up, and it shot back into its former shape. She instinctively knew it was responding more to her intent and wishes than to any physical motion.

Trusting her instinct and urged on by the power surging through her veins, Adrienne leaped suddenly from the ledge, and used the extended staff to vault over the outside wall in one giant leap. She should have been terrified, but instead felt exuberant. The staff contracted behind her, and she positioned it again as she began to hurtle toward the street below – it sprang out again, and she held on for dear life as she shot off into the air, soaring over the deserted Paris streets.

She headed toward where the news report had indicated, covering ground at a terrifying pace. She was really getting the hang of it, propelling herself from rooftop to rooftop, when a bright red figure came hurtling into her peripheral vision, bellowing in apparent terror.

There was nothing Adrienne could do; she was just peaking in an arch between two large commercial buildings when the flying person smashed her out of the air.

Adrienne felt the air leave her lungs, and the staff popped out of her hands on impact. Next thing she knew, she was wrapped up in some kind of cord, her body flush against the other persons, dangling a few feet above the street.

Her mind registered a red and black polka-dotted masked face staring back at her, delicate mouth open in in surprise, and the brightest blue eyes she had ever seen blinking back at her.

"You must be my partner!" Adrienne exclaimed. "Fancy running into you here."

Wow, that was a terrible pun, great job Adrienne, she thought to herself.

The girl squeaked, and they both dropped to the ground with a thud, the cord snapping back into a yoyo the girl was holding, and the rod it had caught on falling into Adrienne's hands as her baton.

"Hi," Adrienne tried again, "I'm… Chat, um, Chat Noir."

Wow, she was just on a role today apparently; where had she pulled that name from?

She felt a little better about her opening lines when the other girl only managed to splutter, "I'm… I'm SO SORRY!" in reply.

Vibrations in the ground and the sounds of screaming that Adrienne's enhanced senses picked up told her that they'd have to do proper introductions later, and she shot off toward the commotion once again. She wasn't sure if the other girl was following.

The fight that ensued inside the sports stadium could be politely referred to as a hot mess.

Adrienne _knew_ how to fight; she'd been trained in brutal close combat methods and had her black belt in martial arts, for fucks sake. It was the one thing she remembered her mother insisting on her doing despite her resistance as a small child, and after she'd been abandoned she'd thrown all her efforts into it, as if to prove to her absent mother that she was worth it after all.

For all the good it did against a twenty foot tall stone giant, she needn't have bothered.

The other girl soared into the arena eventually, coming to rest on the ground next to where Adrienne had just landed from being knocked around by a boulder of a fist.

She spit a clump of blond hair out of her mouth and sprang to her feet.

"I'm going to have to use my destruction power on him, nothing else is working!"

She started to dash back toward the thing, but was brought up short by the other girl yanking her tail, hard.

"No! There's a person in there, you could kill him!"

"You have a better idea, Lady?"

From the look in the girl's eyes after she'd used her lucky charm and gotten a deflated blow-up doll for her efforts, she did have an idea, and Adrienne wasn't going to like it.

Her suspicions were correct, and she gave out an angry yell as the yoyo was wrapped around her ankles and used to send her flying through the air, directly at the monster. For the third or fourth time that day the air was smashed out of her lungs, a giant stone fist catching her midflight. She struggled for breath and felt her ribs creak ominously.

Her rage at her partner disappeared as she watched the girl in action, soaring around the arena and bringing her convoluted mess of a plan into perfect fruition.

That girl was amazing. Fucking crazy as a loon, but absolutely brilliant.

She shredded the bit of paper the monster had been holding onto, and Adrienne found herself on the ground next to a very confused boy her own age, who she vaguely recognized from her class.

Adrienne felt a heavy sinking sensation in her gut. She would have destroyed this boy if her partner hadn't held her back. She could have killed him.

She looked up to see the girl watching a dark butterfly fly away from the shredded paper, and panicked.

"Aren't you forgetting something!?" Adrienne shrieked, pointing at the now distant bug.

Ladybug yelped in horror, and swung off after it on her yoyo. Adrienne grabbed her baton and the dripping wet body suit that was still lying in the field, and lurched off after her, hearing the exclamations of joy from the red-head filming them below.

She caught up to the red figure on a nearby rooftop in time to see her release a now pure white butterfly from her yoyo. Adrienne landed with a wet splat from the soggy doll, causing the other girl to jump.

"Oh, right!" The girl said, and promptly grabbed the wet offering with both hands and heaved it into the air, spraying Adrienne with a large amount of water in the process.

Adrienne hissed like an angry cat, she couldn't help it.

The girl shouted something that Adrienne was too busy shaking water out of her sensitive ears to hear, and a magical burst of red rushed off in every direction, repairing all the damage the chaos had caused to people and possession alike.

Adrienne was still soaking wet and her ribs still ached, but it was still an amazing power.

"I am so, so sorry!" The girl was saying to her, wringing her hands in distress. "I am not good at this, I almost screwed up everything, I don't have a clue why I was chosen…"

"Are you kidding me? You were brilliant! Do you think anyone could have come up with that mad idea and then pulled it off? That was the most amazing thing I've ever seen in my life."

She could see the other girl blushing bright pink under the mask, and looking quite pleased with the complements. A loud beep made them both jump, and a spot on her earrings flashed a warning.

"I've got to go, I'm about to lose my transformation!" She readied her yoyo in preparation to swing off of the roof.

"Wait!" Adrienne called, "What should I call you? When are we going to meet up again?"

The girl paused by the edge of the building, looking back at her over her shoulder.

"Call me… Ladybug. We can meet in this spot tomorrow, after sunset."

And with that she was gone, a red and black spot disappearing into the distance. Adrienne stared after her for a long moment, and odd soaring feeling in her heart.


End file.
